ALBANY – State Comptroller Alan Hevesi announced yesterday that he’s taken the unprecedented step of issuing subpoenas to force Gov. Pataki’s Insurance Department to turn over information about one of its patronage-rich subsidiaries.

He said the Insurance Department’s Liquidation Bureau, which manages more than $3 billion in assets from bankrupt insurance companies and has paid tens of millions of dollars in fees to private law firms in recent years, was refusing to provide information about its activities.

“The Liquidation Bureau claims it is not a state agency and not subject to our audit authority: That’s absurd,” said Hevesi.

State Insurance Superintendent Gregory Serio, who was appointed by Pataki, insisted, “We have nothing to hide.”

Serio said he was stunned by the subpoenas because they were issued after only one meeting with Hevesi’s auditors.

Serio, who insisted bureau activities were not subject to Hevesi’s audits because its funds came from insurance companies and not the public treasury, initially contended he didn’t know “what they [the auditors] want from us because we never had the conversations.”

But he then accused Hevesi’s auditors of “asking for the moon and the stars.”

Serio also said he wasn’t sure if he would disclose Liquidation Bureau material to Hevesi’s investigators, even though such information has been turned over in the past.

Hevesi said his auditors repeatedly notified the department that it planned to conduct an audit. But, when four auditors arrived at the department’s headquarters this year, “they were informed that, at the direction of the superintendent, the Insurance Department was refusing to allow them to conduct the audit.”